Death at Massey Energy Company (GMA Video)

Death at Massey Energy Company (GMA video) File name: GMA_Clips.html

And it has now been 16 hours since the deadly explosion at the Massey Energy Company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. It is the worst blast since 1984. Officials still hoping that they will find some survivors but they have warned the families that the situation is dire.

It is, and what we know right now is at least 25 miners were killed in the blast. 4 others are still missing. More than a thousand feet underground. Crews had to halt the search and rescue effort overnight because of a buildup of toxic gas levels there in the mines.

That is the big danger in these mines, the buildup of methane gas which is highly flammable. The company that owns the mine, Massey Energy is one of the nation’s biggest coal producers, also one of the most profitable but it has a troubling safety record. Last year alone it was fined millions of dollars after admitting to repeated safety violations.

As we heard one witness says the mine explosion was like being in the middle of a tornado. We have complete team coverage this morning beginning with Juju Chang live at the scene in Montcoal, West Virginia. Juju?

Good morning Robin. Even above ground witnesses say the ground here shook for miles around. We are just up the road from the entrance to the mine where the tragedy unfolded. We’re right smack in the heart of West Virginia coal country. Just about every family here is touched by this industry so this morning there is a powerful sense of anguish. It began as a frantic search and rescue operation but as the hours wore on it became clear that the horrific blast had taken a deadly toll.

There appears to have been an explosion.

A toxic blast tears through the mine during a shift change just after 3 o’clock at the Upper Big Branch mine. Panic immediately sets in.

It’s a coal mining community, and when you hear that many ambulances it has to be something bad.

I just started getting all these phone calls and they told me that, they asked me if Kevin was working the evening or day that’s all they said. And when I told them evening, they told me there’d been an explosion.

Rescuers immediately begin piecing it together, an apparent methane explosion. Dozens of workers are leaving the shaft at the end of the day. Suddenly one group feels a blast of air. An explosion turning back they find seven miners dead, two severely injured.

“Before you knew it, it was just like your ears stopped up, you couldn’t hear and the next thing you know, it’s just like you’re just right in the middle of a tornado. We were able to make it since we weren’t that far underground right there at that side of the mountain. We just hurried up and high-tailed it back to the outside.”

By late afternoon members of this tight knit community are standing vigil at a local church as families begin an agonizing wait for news of their missing miners.

When a tragedy like this happens in the area it brings everyone together.

As they pray the community holds out hope. The mine is more than a thousand feet underground but it’s equipped with extra oxygen tanks located in emergency refuges. If miners survive the blasts they can hide in air tight chambers with enough food and water to keep them alive for four days. But by midnight worse fears are realized as the death toll climbs to twelve.

We’re hoping that they possibly made it to one of the refuge chambers that are in place.

But by 2 A.M. hope fades, now 25 are known dead.

It doesn’t appear at this time that any of them made their way to the rescue chamber.

The rescue was suspended, officials fear rising levels of methane and the mine could spark another explosion. Some family members faint at the grim news. As day breaks there is little left to do but hope and pray.

We’ve been through this before and we’ll make it through this with God’s prayers.

Now the command center is working around the clock but they had to pull back that 40 man rescue team at 2 o’clock in the morning because of the dangerous levels of methane and carbon and smoke. It could have sparked another explosion, at that point the decision was made not to risk any further lives. They’re now readying three drilling rigs where they think the miners are, they must then drill down 11 hundred feet to bore a hole to get ventilation and to test the air quality because as you know the buildup of methane is a major danger in coal mining. George.

That is the big danger, Juju thank you for that report and the Governor said earlier this morning that it would take about 12 hours to drill down to get that mine ventilated well enough so that the rescue operation can continue. Again we are joined now by Governor Joe Manchin the governor of West Virginia and Governor, let me just begin by offering our condolences we're really thinking of you this morning.

Thank you George I appreciate it.

Tell us the latest on what you know about the rescue effort as you said earlier this morning in your press conference, you say that they’ve started the drilling to ventilate the mines again but that could take several hours. Well the drilling is for two purposes, not only to ventilate but also to test the air to make sure before we send the rescue teams back in it’s not at dangerous levels or we could lose rescue and we’re not prepared to let that happen at all. So they’re working feverishly right now and it’ll take a good 12 or more hours because they’re going 1100 feet through two abandoned mines, that means you have to put pipe and casing in there in order to have a solid hole all the way down so they’re working. And one drill’s working now, two others are getting their GPS locations and they’ll be right on top of it also.

We know that four miners are missing and heard earlier that they didn’t make it apparently to the rescue chambers. What do we know about where they were working?

George here’s the thing, the horrific thing with this whole situation which is different than I’ve ever been involved. We have 25 miners that we know are confirmed that have perished. We have 4 still missing. We have 11 miners that we have been able to identify and tell their families. Of those 11, three miners were in one family. Now I talked to the mother, she had her oldest son, two of her grandsons, that’s just unbelievable.

Three from a single family.

Three from a single family. And the father of one of the young men had just worked day shift and came out when he felt the explosion when it blew his shirt over his head so the stories are unbelievable as they unfold. We have 14 members, 14 people that are unidentified and four missing. That means we have 18 families at the highest anxiety level not knowing if maybe one of the four would be theirs with a little shred of hope in our prayers and these are the toughest people; West Virginians, just hard working just great people and have their faith in God and each other and their family units the way they hang together. I’ve never seen anything like it George.

You know Massey has a history of violations for not properly ventilating their mines and other safety violations. They were fined almost $400,000 last year for repeated violations. Do you have any sense that they were negligent in this case?

George I don’t know the facts and details yet but I can tell you we have two branches of our government; the federal government MSHA and the state that are inspecting and staying on top and supposed to be right on top of all this. I really don’t know until we see the final results but I tell every miner, since the Sago and Aracoma of 2006 we have a situation now that if you see an unsafe condition pull the plug, shut it down, let’s fix it. Don’t jeopardize anyone’s safety. And these are just such dedicated hard working people I don’t know what happened. We’re going to find out and do everything in our power to never let this happen again. Everything was in place except you cannot plan or barricade in for a horrific explosion with the nature of this one. We’re at twisted railroad tracks. You can imagine how the force of that and the heat that was involved.

Well Governor we are thinking of you this morning, thank you for your time and we’ll be checking in later today. Our prayers George we appreciate it.

You used the right word, horrific. Well thank you Governor and it is horrific. More than 25,000 people have already joined a Facebook page for the miners’ families posting comments like this one, “My heart hurts and my prayers are with the miners and their families. Coal keeps the lights on! And these men risk their lives to keep us comfortable!” Sheri McGraw is the Director of Communications for the American Red Cross Central West Virginia chapter. She was with the miners’ families when they learned that 25 had been killed. Sheri thank you very much for the work that you are doing there and you have been with the families of course there were a number of prayers being said and of course they were very hopeful at first. Can you describe the night for these families?

Well you know really from the beginning to the end the best word that I can think of to describe the evening was agony. The waiting was agony, I mean every moment felt like an hour. People looking hopefully towards the door to see if the mine officials would come in and just tell them something about their families. That was agonizing and then of course when the news was broken that 25 men had died, the agony was just overbearing in that small room I was in there was probably a couple hundred people there with us and the cries that went out. It’s just probably something I’ll never forget and possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to watch happen.

I can only imagine. We heard the Governor talk about how in one family three members were lost. How do you try and comfort the families that still have missing loved ones? There are four that are still missing.

Well you know they like to talk, they like to tell their stories; we like to hear about their families. You know the Red Cross is a symbol of hope and comfort to so many people across the country and when they see the Red Cross there with them, going through a tragedy like this they want to come up to you and they want to talk and they want to tell their story and we want to listen. And of course we’re also there to counsel them, we have highly trained counsellors, health service workers there, we’re feeding them as well and just trying to make them as comfortable as we possibly can.

We know what a tight-knit community this is, a loving community it is, and you were talking about the support that you were giving. How about others there because we heard someone say when they hear the number of ambulances, because it is a coal mining community, they knew it was not good. So how is the town coming together?

You know it’s amazing to see these folks. Now I’m a West Virginian and I actually live right here in this county where this tragedy is happening. I saw so many people touching, I mean everybody was holding each other and touching and holding hands and that’s the vision I’ll take away from this is just everybody holding on to everybody else to try to get through this and it was an amazing thing to see and I know these people are going to get through this with the help of their faith and their family and their friends. Faith, family, and friends. Sheri McGraw thank you and please let them know that we and the nation are thinking of them this morning. Thanks so much Sheri.

We will, thank you.

That whole community finding comfort in each other. As we’ve mentioned Massey Energy, the company that owns the Upper Big Branch mine does have a spotty safety record and our chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross is here with more. And Brian it is both the overall company and this mine in particular that have violations.

Right, a very troubling record of violations that we found in checking the federal safety records overnight. This mine in particular, there’ve been three fatalities since 1998. A surge in safety violations last year and this year alone 122 violations. Many of them relating to problems with ventilation, the most recent violation just last week. Some of them repeat offenses which in the mining industry is considered a very serious offense.

And the federal investigations, as the Governor said are going to continue but the CEO Don Blankenship of this company also a figure of some controversy.

He’s a very controversial figure in West Virginia. Active in politics, raised millions of dollars to defeat members of the Supreme Court and elect his own friends who then voted in his favor. We asked him about it recently in a report for ABC News. He came up to our cameras and reflecting a kind of corporate arrogance he’s famous for tried to push the camera out and told us that we’re liable to get shot if we asked him these kinds of questions. So Mr. Blankenship will have a lot to answer for in this case. In fact the company in the last fatal mining accident in West Virginia, they own that mine as well, they refused to provide documents to the federal safety inspectors and they had to go to court to demand that Massey turn them over. So that’s the approach they’ve taken in many cases in this non- union operation.

This will be an intensive investigation. Brian Ross, thanks very much.

As you know Diane Sawyer has spent a lot of time covering the mining industry and the working life in West Virginia’s mountains. She is down there this morning, traveled there overnight and has already spent some time with the families. Diane?

Robin it’s so good to hear your voice on this morning in West Virginia and as you said I’ve done a lot of reporting on the hard working men and women down in those mines and last night we watched it unfold—the sense of what had really happened in the darkness here. We were up all night at churches, we were at filling stations, we learned that even filling stations can be a shrine and in a moment like this a place for prayer. And we heard the Governor say earlier this was horrific, this was a gigantic blast and you know I’ve been three miles myself into the mountain and I’m going to have a chance to show you more tonight what it is to be a miner having to hold onto a wire to make your way out when there is nothing but darkness and fear all around you after an explosion like the one we had yesterday when as you know Robin tens of thousands of hearts stopped all at once in these mountains so I’ll see you tonight.

Yes you will. And before you go Diane, just let the people know, the people there of West Virginia, they are unlike any that we have here in this nation.

They are pioneering spirits as we know that in America’s wars they have taken some of the biggest casualties per portion of population of any population in this country. They are fighters and if it’s possible to fight back they always will, holding onto each other.

Yes they are resilient Diane, thank you so much.

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